hurriedly wrote and submitted an updated curriculum vitae this afternoon. our college in the university of the philippines, manila is calling for promotion. i rummaged through my memory and emails to pick things that would help in that government peon's wish of getting promoted...for what?...for a few hundred pesos i think! what have i done in the three years since i started teaching? now dude, remember even the little things that you do will be pondered on as points for an individual teacher's assessment. so i wrote: that i headed the poster-making contest in one department week celebration when we were enslaved to produce some cultural activity to match our deparment's name; that i served as one of the judges in a student short filmmaking contest; that i participated in a college orientation and semester planning in puerto galera; that i uttered a poem in a poetry-reading program; that i served as a reactor to a peasant youth group's forum on cuba and the philippines. i was tempted to include that i danced (yeah!!!) in the "not compulsary but damn you newcomers if you don't join and are not embarassed onstage" contests held every semester. not that i belittle these efforts but it seems that these are the only matters majority of the faculty can officially claim as creditable toil in the university. we are overworked and underpaid! how can we write so-called intellectual stuff when we are burdened by too many subject preparations to make, too many students to discuss with, instruct/educate, too many papers too check and too many grudges to mention! from insipid administrators to neurotic colleagues to grimy padre faura-taft-ermita. to top it all...we get salaries that compete with our rich students' snack and gimik allowance! modesty aside, i had written essays and in fact was able to get that refereed publication well before finishing my master's thesis but definitely we could do more if...--->>> we are paid like at least 20,000 pesos man! and teach 9 units with just 25 students at the most. you know, the objective condition of scholarship is free time. pierre bourdieu points this out with the meaning of schole, leisure or free time; meaning that we can only read a lot, think a lot more and write a little when we have the freedom from economic necessity; the usual wise is to finish the necessary work, find some 'raket' especially for those who have kids to feed and humanize.

3:49 am
friday, 16 may 2008